Magdalena Herrera¹ , Lourdes  Savón² , Odilia Gutiérrez²

1. Facultad de Ciencias Pecuarias, Universidad Técnica Estatal, Ecuador 2. Instituto of Animal Science, Apartado Postal 24, San José de las Lajas, Mayabeque, Cuba
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Molecular Zoology, 2015, Vol. 5, No. 2   doi: 10.5376/ijmz.2015.05.0002
Received: 08 Mar., 2015    Accepted: 05 May, 2015    Published: 19 May, 2015

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Herrera et al., 2015, Morphometric indicators of the gastrointestinal tract and accessory organs as affected by the inclusion of shrub in diet of heterozygotic naked neck chickens, International Journal of Molecular Zoology, Vol.5, No.2 1-5 (doi: 10.5376/ijmz.2015.05.0002)

Forty eight heterozygotic naked neck chickens (T451N), 24 females and 24 males in 28 days of age were arranged for evaluating the morphometric indicators of the gastrointestinal tract (full and empty) and its accessory organs with the inclusion of mulberry tree foliage (Morus alba) in the ration. Animals were distributed according to a random block design in four treatments and six replications consisting of a control (soybean meal-maize) and three inclusion levels of Morus alba (3%, 6% and 9%). The relative weight to live weight (%) of the indicators of the full gastrointestinal tract (GIT) increased significantly (p<0.05) the highest MA inclusion (6 and 9%) in comparision to the control by 3 % MA meal. However, proventriculus and ceca weights of the empty GIT were similar regardless the inclusion MA levels but significantly (p<0.05) difference was shown by from the control treatment. Similar performance was observed in accessory glands. Results have suggested that the possibility of including up to 3 % foliage meal of Morus alba in rations for heterozygotic naked neck chickens without affecting the morphometry of the gastrointestinal tract and its accessory organs.

Heterozygotic naked neck chickens; Morus alba; Morphometry